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GENESIS 11:1-9

ACTS 2:1-21

JOHN 14:15-17, 25-27

Pentecost day was traditionally celebrated by the Jews fifty days after the Passover. Pentecost comes from the Greek word for fifty. It was a festival of bringing the first fruits to the Lord and also commemorating the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. Jews and proselytes Jews from different places come to Jerusalem to observe the day. It was this day that God chose to start or birth the church by the outpour of the Holy Spirit which has become known as the day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday. The theme for this year’s Pentecost Sunday is our Counsellor. The Holy Spirit is also referred to as our Counsellor. Jesus promised the disciples and His followers that “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. (John 14:16-17). A counsellor is a comforter, helper, guide and advocate. For this reason, the different translations of the Bible may use any of the foregoing words to replace the word counsellor. We shall deliberate on two important roles the Holy Spirit the counsellor performs in our lives as believers and the Church:

1. Without the counsellor, the church will be misguided and divided.
2. The counsellor leads us to the path of truth and reminds us of the will of God if we obey the Word of God.

Firstly, without the counsellor or the Holy Spirit, the church will be misguided and divided through human-centred or self-glorifying ambitions. Our human nature is constantly opposed to the will of God therefore, it is important for every believer and for that matter the church to completely rely on the Holy Spirit as our counsellor to lead us to do God’s will. We shall recall that in Genesis 1:27-28 “God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27-28), Contrary to God’s will, the people at Shinar by the power of one language and unity of purpose decided that “… let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4). The decision was misguided and was against God’s plan for humanity to disperse and fill the entire earth, for this reason, “the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11:6-9).

Again, we realise that like the people at Shinar, all the disciples and the followers of Jesus spoke the same native language but the difference between the Shinar and Jerusalem gatherings is that the people at Shinar gathered for their own purpose and ambition but the disciples and the followers of Jesus gathered according to the will of God and were waiting for the empowerment and guidance of the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus Christ. The people of Shinar began to speak in different languages and there was confusion among them but when the same Spirit caused the followers of Christ who were all Jews at the time to speak in different languages they delivered the same message about God to the hearing of people from different ethnic and language backgrounds. “…they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:7-12). Peter reminded them that, what had happened was the fulfilment of Prophesy according to Prophet Joel in Joel 2:28-32, the Holy Spirit will be poured upon the people of God and He will guide and Counsel them through prophesy, vision and dreams. Dear friends in the Lord, a church may be dominated by a predominant ethnic group or people who speak one language but if they do not rely on the Holy Spirit as their counsellor, the church will be misguided and divided by the spirit of confusion. The church, the family or wherever a gathering of believers rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, there is spiritual guidance, progress and unity of purpose to glorify God through the core mandate of winning souls for Christ and living a transformed life.

Secondly, the counsellor (Holy Spirit) leads us onto the path of truth and reminds us of the will of God if we obey the Word of God. Jesus said “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you… the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:15-17,26). In other words, we cannot disobey the Word of God and still expect the Holy Spirit to be our Counsellor, Comforter, and Helper to guide us on the path of truth and the fulfilment of the will of God. We must remain obedient to God’s Word and completely surrender to the Holy Spirit if we truly desire to please God and have a deeper relationship with Him as disciples of Christ. Our interaction with the world or people we come across must be consistent with the Word of God and the will of God.

In summary beloved in the Lord, without the counsellor, the church will be misguided and divided. The counsellor leads us onto the path of truth and reminds us of the will of God if we obey the Word of God. May the Holy Spirit continue to be our Counsellor even as we await the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.